Something I have wanted to see done with magic-based mods is the ability to transform yourself into a lich. To attain lichdom, one has to craft and imbue a special item (phylactery) with all their powers and life. Naturally, becoming an undead would come with disadvantages, and destruction of this phylactery would mean death (and loss of all spells imbued in them, perhaps having to relearn those lost.) The advantages, tho, would also have to be worth the risks.

The possibilities with this mod are indeed great, and I feel it could make great use of a class system, with several classes crossing. One could start out as a simple neophyte, following their own path and specializing in their own mix of spells/affinities, with a chosen class giving them more advantage over the related magic. Certain spells can only be uncovered, understood and used by certain classes, or perhaps even have different effects if used by another.

Examples of 2 purposed classes:
Pyromancer/fire mage has mastery over flames, and can manipulate them with more ease (lesser mana cost) and with more intensity.
Necromancers can enslave the undead, channel the unseen spirits to do their will and perhaps even defeat death itself.

Furthermore, each affinity can have 2 sides to their power: one that harms and one that aides. The life affinity gives spells the ability to heal, but it can also distort life to poison, wither and so on. Since it is life, it could possibly animate objects as well...

Like I said, the possibilities are very great. Hope these ideas can inspire new, better refined ones. Peace out

Just a very minor note, but regarding the affinity bonus for the Earth mage, it seems to me like an Earth mage would be the very last person on earth who would benefit from an increase in mining speed...

A 'fix' you could implement to the current system is making the fabricator duplicate items (customizable) instead of recipes (any it can calculate the essence value for).
I.e. The fabricator has a single slot that you place an item into. It will then find the essence value of that item in the config file. If it is explicitly defined, then you can fabricate it.

The config file would then have options for:
Maximum charge of fabricator.
Section for defining which items can be duplicated, and their respective essence cost.
Section for defining what items can be thrown into a blue nexus, and what essence values you get for each. (This section would be used with your current recipe calculation code to determine essence value for blue nexus unmaking. Ideally this section would still define all base items and costs as you do now.)

This way it becomes entirely configurable which items the user(s) can fabricate, and people can adjust the balance (cost and what is possible) to their own taste.

One person might only make cobble and runes creatable at average essence cost, while another makes all base resources creatable at high essence cost, while yet another makes blocks of diamond creatable at very low essence cost.
At least then it is their own choice.

yes actually. if you really want to restart your mod, you could develop it together with thaumcraft 3 in azanors aspect system, and replace raw essence with vis, to make both mods really compatable with each other.

both mods could form one complex, while still being separate mods, that can stand on their own. where ars magica would basically do, what its doing now. adding a spellcasting and spell crafting system to minecraft, while thaumcraft currently focuses on magic devices and item crafting.

its one of those things thats REALLY annoying me about all the tech mods. all these modders are testing their builds on the same server, most of them even work together and do coding and modeling for each other. they build these amazing mods and even go out of their way, to make them compatible with each other.

yet, a lot of those mods use their own energy system, and everyone is basically reinventing the wheel. if you want to use industrial craft and buildcraft, you have to set up separate infrastructures with machines, that in a lot of cases do the same thing. why? if all these guys develop their mods together anyways, why dont they agree on a single energy system to have total compability across all the mods? why are there different versions of copper and aluminum, when they are compatible across the mods anyways? all of these mods could form different branches of a complex, and wouldnt need different versions of the same machines.

the same could be done for the big magic mods like thaumcraft and ars magica. if youre going to restart your mod anyways, this could be an interesting opportunity.

a good example of how this could work, is buildcraft and forestry for example. both mods stand on their own and can be played individually. but theyre compatable, since their machines are based on the same energy system.

one thing, that will definitely help, is that azanor is working on culling down his aspects to less than 10 for the 3.1 version of his mod. these basic aspects could coincide with the affinity system in your mod.

yes actually. if you really want to restart your mod, you could develop it together with thaumcraft 3 in azanors aspect system, and replace raw essence with vis, to make both mods really compatable with each other.

both mods could form one complex, while still being separate mods, that can stand on their own. where ars magica would basically do, what its doing now. adding a spellcasting and spell crafting system to minecraft, while thaumcraft currently focuses on magic devices and item crafting.

its one of those things thats REALLY annoying me about all the tech mods. all these modders are testing their builds on the same server, most of them even work together and do coding and modeling for each other. they build these amazing mods and even go out of their way, to make them compatible with each other.

yet, a lot of those mods use their own energy system, and everyone is basically reinventing the wheel. if you want to use industrial craft and buildcraft, you have to set up separate infrastructures with machines, that in a lot of cases do the same thing. why? if all these guys develop their mods together anyways, why dont they agree on a single energy system to have total compability across all the mods? why are there different versions of copper and aluminum, when they are compatible across the mods anyways? all of these mods could form different branches of a complex, and wouldnt need different versions of the same machines.

the same could be done for the big magic mods like thaumcraft and ars magica. if youre going to restart your mod anyways, this could be an interesting opportunity.

a good example of how this could work, is buildcraft and forestry for example. both mods stand on their own and can be played individually. but theyre compatable, since their machines are based on the same energy system.

one thing, that will definitely help, is that azanor is working on culling down his aspects to less than 10 for the 3.1 version of his mod. these basic aspects could coincide with the affinity system in your mod.

Don't forget about the Universal electricity mods, they all have one form of energy. they also have railcraft working with it as well. I swear, if they add steam-powered essence generators...

But yeah, I think that Azanor and Mithion could work together to achieve great things, TC3 has mainly been artificing while AM was about spellcasting. It's just that both mods have some reliance on a really frustrating sense of luck. That's been the main downfall for these mods in my opinion, and I've found that sometimes it's just easier to rely on other mods like tinker's construct.

i like this idea it's very nice and covers some of the ars magica things i thought wasn't a good as it could be

some of my ideas:
the affinity should have some negative affects and affects that are both good and bad.
for example earth affinity can make you slower and life could heal all mobs around you, meaning both allies and enemies get healed.
also you should be able to get multiple affinity to balance out the negatives (one affinity's positive negates another's negative)
so you can have both water and fire affinity, but having a water affinity would make getting a fire affinity harder.
affinity should also affect the damage of the spell and what kind of casting you can use (fire affinity one means only diminished fire spells, fire affinity twenty means diminished fire spells and normal fire spells)

The casting to level sounds like your starting to confuse difficulty with tediousness. I like the skill tree idea, but i think it should be implemented in a way that you gain skill points for doing certian tasks (like achievments such as killing dark mages, or for the evil/dark side light mages maybe lol) i like the world gen a lot and i would hate to see it go as well. And i think the world gen could serve as a means of gaining levels, i dont know if its possible but it would be cool to have some sort of scaling of the buildings, so maybe the farther from spawn you get the more difficult structures would spawn. And maybe you would get more points for defeating a dungeon the 1st time vs the same structure a 2nd or 3rd time, and maybe get nothing but loot and xp for the any after to avoid grinding. Though overall i am excited to see what you come up with!!! sounds like it will be awesome whatever you decide to do!!!

Private Mod Note
():

Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack

Without minecraft id have to go outside....its bright out there...does anyone have the dimmer switch for the sun?

Just my thoughts...but alot of lore in history refers to ley lines, would it be possible to simulate something like that in Ars Magica 2? I don't know how difficult it would be with the way chunks are loaded and unloaded.

Basically it is held that the planet is criss crossed with a network of energy lines called ley lines, and where these lines intersect they form Nexus'. The more ley lines converging the larger and more powerful the energy there. This energy can be tapped into to create larger spells and sometimes are required for very large and powerful magic.

Also there are many types of spellcasting: verbal, gesticular, runic, symbolic, etc etc would you be focusing on just the Gesticular or also delving into runes and symbols?

Well, i think that the type of spells you discover should depend on the type of structure that you discover them in, for example if you're exploring the ocean you should discover a water spell, a plains biome, an earth spell, the nether, a fire spell. The tower spawning should also have a bit more diversity, meaning that there should be towers in the nether as well as the end. Not as much in the over world, but I think it'd be cool to have the archmage tower spawn a bit off of the end island. Which brings me to the next topic, the archmage tower. I feel that even though the rewards of finding one are massive, it's still a bit difficult to find. Which is why I think that the spawning radius should be lowered to 5000 as 10000 is quite a large area to explore. I don't want to sound like I'm lazy, so I'll put it in perspective. You've just discovered several towers and you've unlocked most of the useful spells, you've stocked up on potions to kill the archmage and so you've headed off. It has now taken you so long to find the tower that you've started to keep a journal of your journey.Well, i think that the type of spells you discover should depend on the type of structure that you discover them in, for example if you're exploring the ocean you should discover a water spell, a plains biome, an earth spell, the nether, a fire spell. The tower spawning should also have a bit more diversity, meaning that there should be towers in the nether as well as the end. Not as much in the over world, but I think it'd be cool to have the archmage tower spawn a bit off of the end island. Which brings me to the next topic, the archmage tower. I feel that even though the rewards of finding one are massive, it's still a bit difficult to find. Which is why I think that the spawning radius should be lowered to 5000 as 10000 is quite a large area to explore. I don't want to sound like I'm lazy, so I'll put it in perspective. You've just discovered several towers and you've unlocked most of the useful spells, you've stocked up on potions to kill the archmage and so you've headed off. It has now taken you so long to find the tower that you've started to keep a journal of your journey.

Spell creation is by far my favorite part of this mod. Especially the requirement to have your friends stabilize the vortex for you. Anything you could do to make this aspect more fun and interesting would be a welcome improvement.

Personally I believe the world gen and exploration is a huge part of what makes this mod so special. Without that I can't help but feel it would more or less be another Thaumcraft. If exploration currently limits your progression then maybe exploration should just be made more interesting and less restricting...somehow. I love the world gen, please don't remove it.

I am currently trying to cook up ideas in my head to help you brainstorm ideas for your next iterations of Ars Magica, but for now I would rto recommend that strongly consider (should you decide to make an Ars Magica 2) doing what Soaryn did before the release of Xycraft: release a version very early in the development of your mod that has all the major, resource-related terrain generation features so that people who plan to carry the mod can be prepared for it.

I'd like to expand a bit on my earlier pitch-in about different words used to makes spells, as in Treasure of the Rudras. This system, as it were, could quite easily be changed to require some large ritual with components (ink, probably) to create the spell. Additonally, it could be a bit more categorical than in Treasure of the Rudras, such that there might in fact just be prefixes, main words and suffixes. Prefixes could alter how the spell is cast, main words define the spell's effect and suffixes alter its power. You could probably start off the mod with maybe two or three basic words (fire, magic, life or something), but the others would have to be researched/found/learned/whatever the hell we're doing with it. That said, I do like the idea of perhaps combining two pre-existing words. This would result in a more expensive, perhaps unstable word that would have diminished attributes of both former words. Perhaps a drawback might be that you lose the two previous words? I'm not sure how this system could work, but I think it'd be a fun way to have a customisable spell system.

Just my thoughts...but alot of lore in history refers to ley lines, would it be possible to simulate something like that in Ars Magica 2? I don't know how difficult it would be with the way chunks are loaded and unloaded.

Basically it is held that the planet is criss crossed with a network of energy lines called ley lines, and where these lines intersect they form Nexus'. The more ley lines converging the larger and more powerful the energy there. This energy can be tapped into to create larger spells and sometimes are required for very large and powerful magic.

Also there are many types of spellcasting: verbal, gesticular, runic, symbolic, etc etc would you be focusing on just the Gesticular or also delving into runes and symbols?

Just food for thought.

thats basically thaumcraft aura nodes. another reason, why im in favour of basing both mods on the same resource and aspect system. the bigger the node, you have nearby your base, the more youre going to be able to cast spells and the more powerful spells you might be able to cast.

typical ars magica nexi could be constructed with vis capacitors as pillars, and crystal clusters, or even crystal cores (that would look awesome) as toppings. when forming the multiblock structure, the capacitors would combine to a connected model into the form of pillars.
the type of crystal cluster could create different nexi, that amplify spells according to affinity. for example 4 pure vis crystal clusters, could give you an arcane nexus. plus, it makes sense. nexi are multiblock structures, that can both store and create magical energy. the same, thing, that vis capacitors and crystal clusters do.

vis could fuel your spellcasting, while the core aspects (like i said, azanor is going to reduce them to about 8 in his 3.1 version of thaumcraft), could be worked into the affinity stystem.

thinking about the potential, how both mods could act as different branches of a greater complex, and how they could interact with each other, already blows my mind

I think you should definitely add more to the alchemy aspect of the mod, maybe by having to go out and harvest materials to research and end up creating basic materials into a little more advanced one. (Such as turning 9 iron into gold, then the gold into diamonds, or other Ars Magica mod items. ect.)

Here are a few suggestions I would like to offer for potential development should you chose to make an Ars Magica two. I hope they come in handy. Also note that I am at no point trying to condescend or tell you how to make you mod, I am just trying to explain how I myself envision an ideal sequel to your mod and making bad jokes along the way.

1. Meet the Progression System

The Travel Log/Arcane Journal: For this aspect of your mod I would recommend that you take a page (nudge, nudge) from the Thaumcraft and Tinker's Construct book and have the player start with their own log that will guide them through your mod and track their progress for them. This could bigin with a simple travel log in their inventory that has vague notes scribbled down on how to begin their new life as a mage.

As the player progresses throughe the basics of your mod this book will become more than a mere guide and will catalogue their progress as a mage and guide them through further developments.

How will the player progress? Well that naturally revolves around the pathos of your mod. As you have clearly stated this mod is designed to encourage adventure and exploration, and so the progression should be further integrated into this philosophy without penalizing the player for not stumbling across the right kind of terrain generation. Instead of having adventure be a mear medium for the goal of progress, adventure a progression should be one and the same. Any form of exploration or experimentation should inform their knowledge of the world and its magics.

The first time a player makes a torch, they learn more about fire. The first time the player loots a seed or flower, they learn more about plany magic. The first time they reach a certain experience benchmark or enchant an item, they learn about the arcane in general. After that the player can literally place what they have discovered or created under further scrutiny by moving it into a slot within their Arcane Journal's gui whetere they can study the object and further their knowledge of the magics it embodies with rigorous notes. Doing this however, will require dissection of the item (like in Thaumcraft 3) and will give them research towards the elements it is made of and will give the player a temporary buff for knowledge gained by any activities they partake in.

What activities you ask? Well, slaying mobs for one could further enhance their understanding of the magics that bind such fould creatures to this world along with the elements that compose them (for instance a creepercwould be comprised of earth and lightning). Farming would enhance their understanding of earth and water, the bringers of corporeal life. Breeding animals could enahnce their understanding of the warm spark of life in all things (fire) and the life giving air that sustains them. Creating redstone mechanism could enhance arcane knowledge, while alchemy would increase knowledge of the transmutational properties of the void (the End). Smelting could bring a better understanding of the properties of Earth and Fire, and so on.

The growth of the subject's understanding on the 8 elemental schools could be summarized on the main page in the form of progress bars that track their progress towards the next level of their mastery. Progressing in any of these specific schools would inform your overall knowledge of the arcane, represented by an arcane progression meter. As this meter grows you will learn more about your own inherent capacity for magic, increasing your mana capacity and give you sudden spurts of genius that will lead to breakthroughs ib your magical studies (new spell types, recipes, and etc).

Though your curiosity about the world will steadily fuel your progress towards mastery of the arcane arts the best way to achieve this is putting into practice what you have learned through trial and error. Once begin to learn and craft spells you will advance in their respective schools through repeated, successful use (with diminishing returns). The more intensive and advanced the spell the more you stand to learn from its practice.

2. Mechanics for Town Fools

Now here's thoughts on world generation spell mechanics their kind of basic, but mostly because their focus is around one ideal: modularity. What I found most exciting about the origonal Ars Magica was that it allowed the player to mix and match spells to create very interesting and helpful combinations. I think if you were to further hone down the reagents and spellcrafting traits down to a versatile core the potential for creativity could be even more jaw dropping.

For one I think ores should be limited to 1-3 types of material (as it currently is) which can be supplemented by surface world gen. Such world gen already displays itself in the current Ars Magica in the form of collectible plants, but a I think it could be expanded to trees, farmable crops, and more drops from mobs. I really think you should expand the role of your 8 essences and utilize these methods of collection as the main means to obtaining them. The process for obtaining them could have room for some nuance, but I think the materials themselves should be limited in quantity, but not potential. This will suit your ideal of exploration as a means of progression in Ars Magica as people will be more inclined towards surface activity rather than rooting about underground for precious, rare materials. There are already so many mods that are dedicated to enriching the rather limited mining experience and as you already know the strength of your mod, and what makes it refreshing, is surface generation, and it deserves to be broadened while still staying focused on key elements to avoid clutter.

As far a spell construction goes I think it should boiled Properties and Enhancements.

a) Properties are the basic elements of the spell that determine its form and function. It is broken up into 4 components - Type: Is it a Buffing Spell? An Offensive Spell? A Defensive Spell? A Utility Spell?; Target: Self? Area? Single Target?; Range: Projectile, Burst, Aura, etc. Element: Air, Water, Earth, Fire, Etc. Once the elemental category is chosen at last, the player choses the affect tied to the element they want and then gets to adjust its properties to a specified maximum or minimum (the higher they are, the more costly the spell). For instance a player could create a Buff with a Single Target Projectile that has the Water Element. From there the select a buffing affect from under the Water domain: Ice Walk (water freezes beneath the beneficiary's feet allowing them to walk over the surface of the water) and increases its duration from 1 minute to 2 minutes. By making a single target projection it adds a cost for not being a self buff (but is still less expensive that an aoe buff), increasing the mana cost from 20 to lets say 22. This is increased further for the extra minute of duration the player added making the spell cost another 10 mana.

Properties are all unlocked from the start or early on in your arcane career.

b ) Enhancements are specific tweaks to the behaviour of the spell and are simple in nature and the amount you can have on a spell is limited and increases its cost. Types of enhancements include things like Piercing (grants a chance for your spell to pierce through the first target), Crit chance, Chaining (a chance to hit more targets), Smite, Wither (against non-undead or Ender only), and etc.

Applying these enhancements could run on a system similar to vanilla enchanting, allowing you to spend experience on a thrilling, collectable crap shoot, or it could be just another selectable micro category that is learned randomly by arcane level ups, or by increased mastery of the elements that get these traits by default.

3. Tiers for Affinities

My view on affinities is that they should have meaningful impact on the player's interaction with the vanilla world, but it should augment how the play with the mod itself more. This could be done through a tiered system of elemental mastery that will further draw the player into the mod by commiting to a certain playstyle without feeling arbitrarily pidgeon holed.

As the player grows more experienced with casting certain elements they develope an affinity for wielding such powers. The Elemental Affinity is the first tier of mastering a specific element and it grants certain benefits to the practitioner's mortal form:

Air: As seen on OP

Water: As OP

Earth: As OP.

Fire: As OP.

Lightning: As OP

Plant: Ought to fall under the life Element.

Ice: The current OP version seems it could be as much of an inconvenience as much as a boon as far as freezing water to ice and lava to obsidian goes and I think would be better suited as a spell. Instead it should just be a chance to slow upon melee attack.

Life: As Plant is on OP. Regeneration would be a later tier.

Ender: Grants "phasing" which gives the player a chance to phase out when struck by a projectile or melee attack, allowing them to effectively ignore it. The current bonus could be moved to a later tier or this one could be the later tier.

In addition spells cast by the player with the same element as the affinity have their mana cost reduced by 15%. The player can have up to 3 active affinities, allowing them further customization, but none of the chosen affinities can be opposing elements (Air-Earth, Fire-Water, Lightning-Ice, Life-Ender). As far as penalties go I do not believe an affinity should have any penalty beyond not being able to carry its opposite as another affinity, which gives these choices some level of gravity without (my philosophy is that the carrot is generally far more effective than the stick as far as gaming goes) making the player feel unecessarily penalized. A system could be incorporated that could allow players to swap the affinities they have unlocked for a nominal price.

When a mage reaches gains true Mastery of his or her element the connection goes beyond a mere augmentation of their physical capabilities, but instead begins to reflect itself in the very nature of their magic. Once an Elemental Master is obtained and chose the player's relationship with the magic of the world changes drastically, encouraging a more nuanced play style. Here are some examples on how certain elemental masteries could change how the mod is played.

Air: The player has a greatly increased mana regeneration rate, but a decreased max mana pool, encouraging bursts of spell casting mixed up with other forms of combat, utilizing the unpredictable ferocity of the wind.

Water: A Master of Water has a mind as mysterious and adaptable as his element, giving him not only an innate resistance to magic , but the ability to warp the distort the spells hurled at him by foes into more mana for himself.

Earth: A Master of Earth relies on the steadiness of his will to carry him through and tribulation and thus has longer lasting and more effective buffs.

Lightning: A Master of Lightning is energized with erratic protential allowing them to occassional cast a spell at a higher level than its set potential.

Ice: A Master of Ice has a much wider mana pool, but a decreased capability for its regeneration. The more he calls on his icy affinity, the more frozen his spirit becomes, reducing his mana production while also coating him in a thick layer of ice. Eventually his chilling calling turns him into an icy juggernaut, nearly immune to harm, but unable to generate mana until he has thawed. (Basically the more spells he casts the more his mana regen is debuffed for a time, but also the more his defense is increased. This encourages him to change his tactics after casting for some time).

Life: A Master of the magics of Life wields spells so vigorous that they can randomly reknit his wounds and rejuvinate his spirits with small burst of mana thanks to the backlashes of energy coming from the vivacious practice of their art.

Ender: Those who master that obscured and alien Ender element are unparlelled manipulators of the primal energies of the void, and as such they can use its raw potential for enhanced conjurations, whether it be merely making a tool or object crafted from raw magic and imagination last longer or lengthier and more effective visit of a summoned creature, ripped from its own dimension to do the bidding of the mage.

Arcane: Unlocked by a great understanding of magic those who choose not to be constrained by a specialty have an understanding of raw magic that is so innate that they have a small chance of casting their spells for free.

Unlike affinities only one mastery can be active at a time and swapping it is both costly and complicated (maybe even requiring outside help to accomplish), but unlocking it also allows mages to learn to summon their own familiars. These creatures masters by fighting along their side, performing attacks based on their form, and by further enhancing physical and spiritual connection to their element to even greater heights, giving them a further 5% reduction to the spells of the cosen element and affording them a further augmentation to their physical capabilities based on their shared element:

Air: Slow fall while sneaking mid air.
Water: Faster underwater mining and water breathing.
Earth: A chance at extra nuggets from ores harvested and player is effected less by knockback.
Fire: Fire immune and faster swim speed in lava.
Lightning: Jumps higher and can walk over one block high inclines.
Ice: Enemies that strike you are slowed and have a chance of being weakened.
Life: Added health regeneration.
Ender: Enemies cannot teleport near you.
Arcane: You may choose a 4th affinity. Or alternatively it could allow you to choose opposing affinities.

Familiars of the same element but with alternate benefits could be yet undiscovered.

Anyway, thanks if you read through any of my ideas. I know it was all rather verbose or possibly muddled, but the possibilities of this mod are just very exciting and I couldn't help but throw some of the half-brewed ideas bubbling around in my head on the forum as quickly as possible. If you like any of the ideas let me know and I can always elaborate more, but for now I will leave it at this and hope that you find some to your liking. Thanks for the time and your open ear Mithion, and above all thanks for the wonderful mod! I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

the life affinity perk sounds really strong by the way. while the other affinities seem to grant some utility, life would basically give you a permanent regeneration buff.

how about eating food would heal 1 to 2 hearts instead, additionally to filling the hunger bar? some food can be eaten, even with a full hunger bar, so eating food could be used for healing.

fire affinity could add the ability to toggle auto smelting on your tools, or fire damage on your weapons. sounds a little bit cooler and more useful than a bit of damage reduction. you can use enchanted armor for that.